"Each one of us benefits from the protection assured by the threat of guns; each one of us could be the next life they claim as recompense, without regard for personal rectitude. This perspective would require us – all of us, though in different ways and to different degrees – to see ourselves as both complicit with this power and the victims of it."Yep!
Friday, January 25, 2013
Theologians on Externalities
My brother, Evan, shares these thoughts from a fellow theology doctoral student:
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Hmm. Seems to me this student is sort of going against the "guns don't kill people" idea. It seems he's attributing a sort of mystical power to guns, when the power actually resides both in the hands of people wielding them, and in the hands of the rest of us in choosing who can do that, and in what circumstances.
ReplyDeleteRick describes the nature of "the powers" in this way: "these “powers” represent the collective effects of human capacities – capitalism, communism, and the economy, ideology, religion, family, among others – that take on a life of their own and are inexplicable with reference to single human actors. Without them, life is not life, but bare potency. The powers give patterned and ordered rhythms to our life together. Yet, in their corrupt form, the powers not only support and nourish but also threaten and ravage human life. Our own capacities become alienated from our conscious intentions."
DeleteAs a theological concept I understand that it's often confused with something mystical and magical (and many theological accounts of it are in fact more supernaturally determined), but this account of "the powers", at least, is similar to (in fact it owes much to!) concepts of power structures in social theory.
OK, so as I read it, then, Rick is saying, "men make their history, but they do not make it just as they please." I would say "institutions" instead of powers, but I suppose that's a question of taste -- the bottom line is that it's not a denial of human freedom, just acknowledgment that freedom operates within constraints. Thanks for the response.
DeleteEvan,
ReplyDeleteIn reading that you're making me glad that I am an atheist.
Plenty of atheists would affirm what this theologian is describing as "the powers", and plenty of theists wouldn't hold to this sort of understanding of power structures. I'm not sure your beliefs about God in themselves grant you any particular distance from this understanding of human intentionality/social life.
DeleteI'm an atheist too, but I find religion to be a method of grappling with philosophical, ethical, and practical questions. Religious thought is concerned with basically the same sort of questions that "scientific" economists are.
Delete